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Rebecca James imageContact

Office 360 Leith Street, room 1S.10
Tel +64 21 220 7101
Email rebecca.james@otago.ac.nz

Google scholar

Academic qualifications

  • BSc in Botany, minor Statistics, University of Otago
  • MSc in Marine Botany, University of Otago
  • PhD in Science, University of Groningen and The Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Institute (NIOZ), The Netherlands

Research interests

Rebecca's research focuses on coastal sediment processes, from physical transport to biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nutrients. She is particularly interested in the feedbacks within marine vegetated ecosystems, and in exploring nature-based solutions to mitigate land run-off, coastal flooding, erosion and climate change, with the goal of building community resilience and supporting mahinga kai.

Courses

  • MARI 112 Marine Biology: The Living Ocean (Paper Co-odinator)
  • MARI 322 Coastal and Shelf Seas Oceanography
  • ECOL 211 Community Ecology

Current postgraduate students

  • Alexandra Faulkner, MSc: Investigating nutrient and carbon cycling in sediments after organic matter additions
  • Nieve Nicholas, Honors: Determining coastal nutrient inputs from terrestrial organic matter degradation

Publications

Hylén, A., Arndt, S., Balmonte, J., Bosman, R., Bui, W., Chou, L., … James, R. K., … van de Velde, S. J. (2026). Ikaite precipitation indicates near surface occurrence of methane in an Icelandic fjord. Geochemical Perspectives Letters, 40, 43-48. doi: 10.7185/geochemlet.2621 Journal - Research Article

Lansu, E. M., Reijers, V. C., Daniëls, F., James, R., Christianen, M. J. A., & van der Heide, T. (2025). Habitat mapping of coastal dunes with deep learning. Ecological Informatics, 92, 103444. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2025.103444 Journal - Research Article

James, R. K., Daniels, F., Chauhan, A., Wicaksono, P., Hafizt, M., Harahap, S. D., & Christianen, M. J. A. (2024). Monitoring vegetation patterns and their drivers to infer resilience: Automated detection of vegetation and megaherbivores from drone imagery using deep learning. Ecological Informatics, 81, 102580. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2024.102580 Journal - Research Article

James, R. K., van de Velde, S., Arndt, S., Glud, R. N., & Attard, K. (2023). Seagrass meadows may physically trap carbon, but do they enhance its preservation? Proceedings of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting: Wide. Open. Science. B51E-1826. Retrieved from https://www.agu.org Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract

Christianen, M. J. A., Smulders, F. O. H., Vonk, J. A., Becking, L. E., Bouma, T. J., Engel, S. M., James, R. K., … Bakker, E. S. (2023). Seagrass ecosystem multifunctionality under the rise of a flagship marine megaherbivore. Global Change Biology, 29, 215-230. doi: 10.1111/gcb.16464 Journal - Research Article

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